Thank you very much, Mr. Hoback. That's an excellent question.
I think it's a challenge for all of Canada and all industries with the aging demographics of baby boomers, but particularly in the forestry sector. Because we did face those down periods due to layoffs, our workforce is somewhat older than the average. They will be coming up for retirement. We have a rough estimate of some 40,000 workers who need to be replaced due to retirements, and then an additional 20,000-plus for our new products and our new markets. That's where we come up with the number of 60,000 over the next decade.
That won't come from one source. It has to come from all sources. There are many people who live in these communities close to the mills who traditionally haven't thought of themselves as forestry workers: women, new Canadians, our aboriginal population, our first nations. We are creating programs with all of our employers and with the Forest Products Association to promote forestry as a quality-of-life, good, green job to have.
We will do our part to promote forestry in particular. We need the help of all of our partners—the provincial governments, the federal government, and others—to make sure we have that skilled workforce coming in, whether it's through immigration policy or through making sure there's enriched training and support programs for first nations and transferability of skills across jurisdictions. It's not just skilled labour but unskilled labour, so it's both a volume and a quality challenge. It's not going to be solved with one tool. We're going to need a whole basket of tools. We're working with our partners to develop those right now.
With regard to first nations communities, we just gave an award to a wonderful young woman who is of Métis background. She's developing new and wonderful technologies for the forestry sector. She is a skilled worker from the Métis community. You celebrate successes and try to bring more people into the industry.